Loss of John Beckner :-(

[Carl Chapman]

Hi all,
We were saddened to read of the passing of John Beckner. John was working in the Herbarium at U. of Florida the year we were there ('66-'67) and was responsible for getting us hooked on Orchids. As I mentioned last year, we are back in them after several years away. Our collection is now nearing 150 plants. We got back to try to avoid the intense labor involved with our recent love of Daylilies. They like to bill them as the "Carefree Perrenial" - don't believe that for a minute !!

This spring, we built a 10X10' shade house to give the plants a summer outdoors. They, loved it and rewarded us with good growth and blooms. The plants survived a couple nights in the 40's (even Phalaenopsis) when the weather people missed the predicted low. We have brought most of them in now as we have had LOTS of rain over the last few days. We figured that they needed to dry out. We are sneaking in on our total rainfall for the last 3 months here in the first few days of September. They are also predicting low temps in the mid-upper 50's the next several nights. We didn't figure that the cold with the wet would be good for any of the plants.

Take care all...

Carl (southern WV)